The world is paying attention to Jacksonville today

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office had personnel at the Prime Osborn Convention Center Friday morning taking applications from citizens interested in sitting in on the Michael Dunn murder trial which is scheduled to start February 3rd. with jury selection. Individuals could fill out a form for each potential day that the trial would be in session and they would become part of a drawing for the available seats in the courtroom.

State Attorney Angela Corey (right foreground) talks with Ron Davis (left) and Lucia McBath, parents of Jordan Davis, after a hearing for Michael Dunn Tuesday, January 21, 2014 in Jacksonville, Florida. Dunn is charged in the death of teen Jordan Davis at a Southside gas station in November 2012. Judge Russell Healey ruled that the trial will begin on schedule February 3

Michael Dunn enters the courtroom for a hearing to delay his trial Tuesday, January 21, 2014 in Jacksonville, Florida, in the death of teenager Jordan Davis at a Southside gas station in November 2012. Judge Russell Healey ruled that the trial will begin on schedule February 3.

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If the eyes of the world do indeed turn to Jacksonville and the trial of Michael David Dunn, there’s a simple, gripping reason why.

“It’s a perfect story, that perfect storm,” said Marc Silver, “that confluence of racial profiling, stand-your-ground law and access to guns.”

Silver is a documentary filmmaker from London whose work has taken him around the world. After someone showed him a Rolling Stone magazine article on the shooting, he knew the Dunn case would be his next project.

He’s been to Jacksonville several times in preparation, and was back Monday morning as jury selection began.

At the Duval County Courthouse that morning, it was still a pretty quiet scene, one that figures to get busier once the jury is picked and witnesses begin to take the stand.

Twenty-six news organizations have credentials to cover the trial. They include the Associated Press and Reuters, CNN and Fox, CBS and NBC, and TV stations from Atlanta and Orlando. Al Jazeera America was there, too, the first national crew on the scene.

Across Broad Street, workers were putting up scaffolding to give camera crews a raised, good view of the courthouse.

There figures to be intense interest in this “perfect storm” of a story, in which Dunn is accused of firing on and killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis after a gas-station argument over a loud car stereo.

A straightforward story on the case on CNN’s website, for example, had more than 1,800 comments early Monday afternoon.

As website comments often are, they tended to be heated, covering topics of race — Dunn is white, Davis was black — guns and gun control, anger and an uncivil world.

A small group of families and friends of murder victims gathered outside the front entrance of the courthouse Monday. They said they were there in support of Davis’ parents.

Melissa Blount was among them, wearing a shirt with the name of her friend, Jillian Marie Berrios, who was shot and killed in October while sitting in her car in Orange Park.

“It has to stop,” Blount said. “Somebody has to pay attention.”

Her son, Jordan Iacovelli, 18, is a rapper with the stage name of Jordan Hill. He said he knew Davis, as well as the teens who were with him when he was shot.

The senselessness of the shooting bothered him. “To lose your life over the volume of your music is pretty ridiculous,” he said.

Iacovelli said he’d just spoken with tourists from Czechoslovakia whose attention was drawn by the demonstrators’ signs. They told him they thought everyone in America was armed, all the time, he said.

“I’m ashamed, because this is reflecting the way all the other countries think Americans are, people thinking America is such a horrible place,” he said.

Silver, the documentarian, said many in Europe are perplexed by America’s gun culture, its Second Amendment and its ceaseless toll of gun deaths. “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong,” he said. “Just hard to understand.”

That’s the backdrop for his planned film, which on his website is titled “3.5 Minutes.” It’s named for how long the fatal confrontation lasted.

By Monday afternoon, three members of the New Black Panther Party’s Jacksonville branch had shown up outside the courthouse, as leader Mikhail Muhammad kept up a microphone-aided broadside that criticized the stand-your-ground law, white people, black cops, State Attorney Angela Corey and the state of Israel. During a water break, he said Jacksonville as well as Dunn is on trial. He vowed to stay at the courthouse throughout the trial, and said New Black Panther members from other cities will soon be joining him.